ople lasts
only a brief period, remains in the primitive man a permanent
disposition and one that is always active. This process of
personification is the perennial fount whence have gushed the greater
number of myths, an enormous mass of superstitions, and a large number
of esthetic productions. To sum up in a word, all things that have been
invented _ex analogia hominis_.

Transformation or metamorphosis is a general, permanent process under
many forms, proceeding not from the thinking subject towards objects,
but from one object to another, from one thing to another. It consists
of a transfer through partial resemblance. This operation rests on two
fundamental bases--depending at one time on vague resemblances (a cloud
becomes a mountain, or a mountain a fantastic animal; the sound of the
wind a plaintive cry, etc.), or again, on a resemblance with a
predominating emotional element: A perception provokes a feeling, and
becomes the mark, sign, or plastic form thereof (the lion represents
courage; the cat, artifice; the cypress, sorrow; and so on). All this,
doubtless, is erroneous or arbitrary; but the function of the
imagination is to invent, not to perceive. All know that this process
creates metaphors, allegories, symbols; it should not, however, be
believed on that account that it remains restricted to the realm of art
or of the development of language. We meet it every moment in practical
life, in mechanical, industrial, commercial, and scientific invention,
and we shall, later, give a large number of examples in support of this
statement.

Let us note, briefly, that analogy, as an imperfect form of
resemblance--as was said above, if we assume among the objects compared a
totality of likenesses and differences in varying proportions--necessarily
allows all degrees. At one end of the scale, the comparison is made
between valueless or exaggerated likenesses. At the other end, analogy is
restricted to exact resemblance; it approaches cognition, strictly so
called; for example, in mechanical and scientific invention. Hence it is
not at all surprising that the imagination is often a substitute for, and
as Goethe expressed it, "a forerunner of," reason. Between the creative
imagination and rational investigation there is a community of
nature--both presuppose the ability of seizing upon likenesses. On the
other hand, the predominance of the exact process establishes from the
outset a difference between "thinkers" and